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The Government is meeting with 22 nursing leaders today to launch the Nursing and Care Quality Forum. Public Health Minister, Anne Milton, says they're investing a million pounds to raise standards across the UK and ensure patients are treated with "dignity, compassion and respect".

The Medical Director of the NHS, Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, has written to Strategic Health Authorities urging them to urgently review practices. Last week it emerged hundreds of thousands of patients are sent home in the middle of the night.

While some patients may of course choose to be discharged during these hours, the examples highlighted of elderly patients being left to make their way home by themselves in the middle of the night are obviously unacceptable, and need to be addressed urgently... As health professionals we all agree that patients should be treated with compassion, so it is simply not acceptable to send people home from hospital late at night when they may have no family members nearby to support them.